Home at last

I finally arrived home late on Sunday evening after a VERY long day of travel.  The best part of the trip home was seeing Regan and Landon at the airport to welcome me back.  The rest of the trip I could have done without.  Leo and I got back to Minneapolis late Friday night from the most beautiful weather in San Diego only to be welcomed by temps in the upper 30s and rain.  As we drove to the hotel the rain turned to sleet and by the time we were checked in it had fully changed over to snow.  It was 11:30 pm and the news was forecasting 1 - 3 inches by morning - no problem!  But as they say in Minnesota - "If you don't like the weather just wait 15 minutes and it will change"  By 6am there was already 3 inches of snow and no signs of letting up.  The news was reporting that the current Winter Storm Warning was calling for continued snow, heavy at times at over 1"/hour with total accumulations from 6 to 12 inches.  Our flight was scheduled to Detroit at 8:20am then our connection to Shanghai was to leave at 3pm.  We checked our bags in and headed for the gate, got on the plane, sat through 2 de-icings during which they found a "problem" with one of the tail wings and decided to head back to the gate for inspection at which time everyone had to de-plane and then race to get re-booked on another flight.  It was now 10:15am.  We got booked on the 11:30 flight to Detroit which would leave us about 30 minutes to make our connection - again, no problem.  The snow was getting heavier.  By 12 noon they cancelled our plane to Detroit and so it was back to our friendly Delta rep (no, seriously.  Her name was Gerri and she was great!) to get rebooked.  This time we really changed things up and got onto the 1:10 pm to Tokyo with continuation to Shanghai.  We were thankful to be on a flight but had given up all hope for our bags.  We finally arrived in Shanghai and were waiting patiently by the baggage claim when I decided to check with the luggage service department and lo and behold our bags were there AHEAD of us!!  Not sure how that happened but it did - must have been the "Priority" tags due to my Medallion status - finally a benefit from the Sky Miles program.